Paintings

Rag Rug Series

  • Rag Rug 4, 2021, gouache on watercolor paper, 10.5 x 14″
  • Rag Rug 5, 2021, gouache on watercolor paper, 10.5 x 14″
  • Rag Rug 3, 2019, gouache on watercolor paper, 10.25 x 13.25″
  • Rag Rug 2, 2019, gouache on watercolor paper, 10.25 x 14″
  • Rag Rug 1, 2019, gouache on watercolor paper, 10.25 x 13″

The Rag Rug gouache paintings are faithful reproductions of details of the sculptures.

Remember Mother Ann Series

  • Remember Mother Ann 1, 2022, gouache on Arches paper, 21 x 23″
  • Remember Mother Ann 2, 2022, gouache on Arches paper, 21 x 23″
  • Remember Mother Ann 3, 2022, gouache on Arches paper, 21 x 23″

This series was included in the 2022 Complex Muses exhibition at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, MA, curated by Todd Bartel. For the exhibition, invited artists were assigned to make new work based upon an object in the Museum’s collection. I was assigned a Shaker rocking chair, made at the Mount Lebanon Shaker community by Lillian Barlow and William Perkins.

The history and culture of nearby Shaker communities at Watervliet, Hancock and Mount Lebanon have always felt very present to me, and this cohort of chair makers has held particular interest. Lillian Barlow and William Perkins were friends, expert craftspeople, entrepreneurs and members of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Second Family at the turn of the twentieth century. Together they operated the chair shop at Mount Lebanon, producing many pieces of furniture for sale to the public – among them the rocking chair in the Art Complex Museum’s collection. Their devotion to their craft was in keeping with their commitment to one another, and to their shared spiritual vision at a time when Shaker communities were struggling for viability in a rapidly changing world.

In an effort to look more closely at what they made, I visited the Mount Lebanon Museum’s collection, and photographed many woven chair seats, along with samples of woven chair tape. This painting is a composite of eight of those observed patterns, aligned in a motif that is both faithful and fictional. On the day that I visited the museum, the collections manager drew my attention to a very large wooden sign painted with the words ‘Remember Mother Ann.’ Attributed to William Perkins, the sign was made to draw his dwindling family’s focus back to its core purpose of worship through work.